The popular social bookmarking site Digg sold today or in recent days for $500,000. Many are surprised and reporting that they think the sold price is very low for the site which has many users and is generally well received. Do you think the sale price is low? How do you think the acquisition will affect the service? Is Digg going to go under or rise to the top?
Considering it was valued at one time at $300m it could be considered a low price, though the buyer would have done due diligence on usage stats and revenue streams no doubt. There was a mass exodus of staff a while back to another company, it’s been operating on a skeleton staff so wasn’t going anywhere without some fresh investment and direction.
May I know who is the buyer? Which group?
betaworks
My apologies for dropping this in the wrong section. I had no idea that Digg had recently experienced a mass exodus. Are you willing to say which company they moved to? I hope that Betaworks is ready to bring it back up to speed. These types of social bookmarking services can be a very interesting gauge as to what the public finds most interesting. It is also a good way to discover articles that you may not come across in your daily media stroll.
$500k was only the price paid by Betaworks for the domain name, code, data and traffic. The Washington Post had previously forked out around $12m for the Digg team, and Linked In paid about $4m for 15 Digg patents
Hummm… I still do not understand how much money the Digg.com people received. If the total $ 500,000 is too low price.
$500k + $4m = $4.5m approx in total went to the Digg owners. The $12m was largely used to compensate ex-Digg staff for loss of share options etc
$500k is only for the site alone. There have been other sales such as patents etc.
I think Kevin Rose has said in the past that he missed the boat on selling, but onwards and upwards. 
Whatever may be the price, let’s hope to see Digg on the rise. It’s a very user-friendly Social Media site used by most.
As others have said, the sale was kind of just for the “website itself”, the sale wasn’t for the “company” and “all of its assets”; as they have sold several different “assets” off already that could be seen to devalue them to any future buyers. If I were buying a website that owned patents, I’d be interested in owning the technology AND the patents as well.
Even then it seems to be a bit low but then I’m not privvy to the inside of Digg that potential buyers would become aware of through their due diligence process.
wow!
if to be honest, the price doesnt surprise me , because digg was one of the first bookmarketing sites.
i thought the price would be higher than 500,000$.
but why they sell digg? what is the main reason?
It’s an extremely low price, especially since the site basically IS web 2.0 but I’m hoping they will bring it back to its former glory
Some of the decisions that Digg took as a part of redesigning hurt them back. They removed the ‘bury’ button back in 2010 ans this caused enrage among users. Most of the Digg loyal users moved out to Reddit as a result of this unfortunate redesign in 2010.
I think that the price is very low for this site , because it’s not a serious money for site like that . I think that nearly cost of this site is above then 5.5 million $ .
I think the company who buy this website have a serious plans about this website .
This is a really good lesson. You have to time the market. Sometimes holding on too long means less $$. In this case, a lot less!
i haven’t used digg since then. I don’t like the site now. You only can add the link and that’s it. There’s no way to know if the link got posted whatsoever. I mean, you can’t track your own submission. 